Eric Limer

Along with the Nexus 4, and the Nexus 10 tablet, Google has just announced Android 4.2, a new flavor of Jellybean. While it doesn't merit a new name of its own, it does add quite a few neat new features. Here's a rundown.

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Miracast Wireless Display Support

4.2 will support Miracast, an AirPlay-like service. This means you'll be able to stream YouTube videos, movies, TV, and anything that's on your tablet screen to an HDTV if you have a wireless display adapter. Who needs a Nexus Q, right?

Multi-User Support

Just like your laptop—and Microsoft Surface—Android 4.2 devices will now be able to support multiple user logins. Each user can have their own homescreen, background, widgets, apps, and games. It even keeps things like game-save progress and high-scores separate. The update will also use multi-tasking to keep programs running in the background to make swapping users snappy.

Photo Sphere Camera

Like a beefed up panaromic camera, Photo Sphere will let users do exactly what the name implies: take spherical photos. You can even add these spheres to Google Maps, which could make for some pretty cool crowdsourcing.

Daydream

Daydream is a screensaver-esque feature that will let your device show off useful (or amusing) information when idle or docked. It seems that it'll operating in a smart, Google Now-ish sort of way, and can show things like photo albums, news from Google Currents, and more.

Actionable Notifications

Certain Android 4.2 notifications will now let you take appropriate actions directly from the notifications pane. We don't know exactly what notifications will support this yet, but the example Google gives is returning a missed call directly from the notification.

Improved Accessibility Options

Jelly Bean now supports a triple-tap to zoom in on small text, or anything else you need a closer look at. After you're zoomed in, you can pan around with a two-fingered touch. There's also Gesture mode for blind users, which uses touch and swipe gestures along speech output to make it possible to navigate the UI without having to see it.

Google Now Improvements

Google Now can now pull from Gmail to get ideas for new cards. It can also help you track packages, scout out movie information, and even help you find great spots for photo-ops based on your location. [Google]